The Beginning: Living Our Dream

My husband and I both grew up in small towns but moved to the city the first chance we got. 20-odd years of city living later, we really started to yearn for the simple life again. We had been visiting Bill’s grandmother in east Tennessee for 6 years, and loved the area. As we prepared for a visit in July 2005, we convinced my parents to join us – my dad will be retiring in 2009 and is looking for a nice place to live. We, strangely enough, want them to live close to us. Our diabolical plan: to make them fall in love with the place; find a big piece of property we all can live on; we all buy it, then we live here until Dad retires. Well, the plan worked! They loved east Tennessee. We found a house. Despite our realtor’s efforts to foil us, we bought it. We moved here in November 2005, and it is just wonderful.

We have a house, 2 barns and about 7 acres of partially-cleared pasture. Now we just need a horse! Actually, we have a horse, but he’s not ours. The former owner had a friend who kept his horse here, and we agreed to let him continue to do that. He is a beautiful sorrel quarter horse (I think!) named Blaze.